Many Somalis are reacting with horror — and a sense of understanding — at British runner Mo Farah’s tale of being trafficked to Britain as a child and forced to look after other children. Olympic champion Farah was born in present-day Somaliland, a territory by the Gulf of Aden that has asserted independence from the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia. In a BBC documentary aired earlier this week Farah revealed how as a boy of 8 or 9 he was separated from his family and trafficked from neighboring Djibouti to the UK under a new name under which he eventually ran for glory. Here, in the Somali capital Mogadishu, those who have heard of Farah’s account express sadness for what he went through as a child forced to work in servitude. But they also point out that he was not alone in facing exploitation. Conflict, climate change and economic collapse are displacing record numbers of people around the world, pushing more and more migrants into the hands of criminals who profit by smuggling them into Britain, the European Union and the U.S. Somalis, like their neighbors in Ethiopia and Eritrea, are often among the desperate — people fleeing conflict and hunger in hopes of safety and a better life. Convinced they have little to lose, the young, in particular, risk their lives on flimsy boats organized by human traffickers who get them across the English Channel to Britain. Those who can afford it pay thousands of dollars to reach countries where they hope to find jobs and security. Others fall prey to criminals who force them into sex work, drug crimes and domestic servitude. Wealthier countries lack robust policies to respond to this complicated situation. Britain has welcomed refugees from Ukraine, for example, while proposing to deport asylum seekers from other places to Rwanda. While Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the Rwanda plan will break the business model of criminals who smuggle people across the Channel in inflatable boats, immigrant activists are suing over a plan they describe as illegal and inhumane. Read: Olympic champion Mo Farah to make track comeback in 10,000 Farah, who represented Britain at three straight Summer Olympics in 2008, 2012 and 2016, is a rare success story. Many others trying to escape poverty, hunger and violence in countries such as Somalia don’t get so lucky — the reason many activists here say efforts must be put into supporting local governments to eradicate the many reasons people wish to go. “It is certainly sad that Mo Farah had such a bad experience as a boy,” said Ahmed Dini, who runs the Mogadishu-based children’s rights group Peace-Line. “It has become evident that there are many contributing factors to child trafficking, such as poverty, a lack of adequate education, and insufficient security.” Farah still has family members — including his mother and two brothers — living on a farm near Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. He said in the BBC film that his father was killed during unrest when the boy was 4. In the documentary, produced by the BBC and Red Bull Studios, Farah said that when he left Africa he thought he was going to Europe to live with relatives and had a piece of paper with the contact details. But the woman he ended up with tore his papers and took him to an apartment in west London where he was forced to care for her children. Farah said his fortunes in Britain changed when he was finally allowed to attend school. A teacher who was interviewed for the documentary recalled a 12-year-old boy who appeared “unkempt and uncared for,” was “emotionally and culturally alienated” and spoke little English. Farah eventually told his story to a physical education instructor. The teacher contacted local officials, who arranged for a Somali family to take him in as a foster child. He soon blossomed on the track. Anti-slavery advocates say Farah is the most prominent person to come forward as a victim of modern-day slavery, a crime that is often hidden because it occurs behind closed doors and inflicts such trauma on its victims. Now that a man of such celebrity has spoken of his experience, there can no longer be any doubt about the horror of child servitude even among ordinary Somalis who otherwise would find his account “unusual,” said Bashir Abdi, an academic based in Mogadishu. “Children consistently face abuses, but the story this renowned athlete revealed has captured the attention of many people, including Somalis,” he said. “We often hear of child exploitations and I believe that significant (numbers of) Somali children go through domestic violence and abuses, but little is exposed to the public.” Amina Ali, a stay-home mother of four in Mogadishu, told The Associated Press that it was tough for her to hear the story of a 9-year-old boy “so weak and helpless forced to clean house and change the diapers of other kids.”   “As a mother, I felt sadness for him once I have listened,” she said. “Praise be to Allah that he is no longer under those circumstances. However, he is now at some point where he can reveal his story and I wish those (who) committed that abuse to be brought before justice one day.”

Across two pandemic Olympics set in Asian countries, Asian American women fronting the Games have encountered a whiplashing duality — prized on the global stage for their medal-winning talent, buffeted by the escalating crisis of racist abuse at home. The world’s most elite and international sporting event, which pits athletes and countries against each other, underscores along the way the crude reality that many Asian women face: of only being seen when they have something to offer. “It’s like Asian American women can’t win,” says Jeff Yang, an author and cultural critic. “Asian American female athletes, like most Asian American women in many other spaces, are seen as worthy when they can deliver … and then disposed of otherwise.” The issue is playing out at the Beijing Winter Games, the third straight Olympics set in Asia and the second held during the unrelenting global coronavirus crisis — and playing out, too, during a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Here, U.S. snowboarder Chloe Kim and China’s freestyle skier Eileen Gu are the latest additions to the list of American women of Asian descent who have been “It Girls” of the Winter Games, joining icons like American figure skaters Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan. When Kim and Gu earned their gold medals in Beijing, it was the perfect bow on professional narratives that have been covered incessantly leading up to the actual event. Their star power and talent made them two of the de facto spokeswomen for the Olympics. Also read: US-born freeskier Gu wins Olympic big air gold for China Meanwhile, other Asian American women like figure skaters Karen Chen and Alysa Liu of the U.S. team and Zhu Yi of the China team have also been promoted by their national teams and scrutinized — sometimes harshly — by Olympic fans. Commentators have mocked Yi for falling in the team event, as if she deserved the mistake after giving up her U.S. citizenship to compete for her ancestral homeland. Others are angry that she “stole” the Olympic spot from an actual China-born athlete. Even the winners struggle to feel fully embraced in America. Kim, who won the halfpipe at the Beijing and Pyeongchang Olympics, has revealed she was tormented online daily. She says she was consumed by fear that her parents could be killed whenever she heard news about another brutal assault on an Asian person. There have been more than 10,000 reported anti-Asian incidents — from taunts to outright assaults – between March 2020 and September 2021, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that gathers data on racially motivated attacks related to the pandemic. “The experience of hate is withering, and it takes a huge mental health toll,” says Cynthia Choi, the coalition’s co-founder. “When we think about the Olympics, it’s really incredibly powerful to have taken place in Asia three times in a row. That context is very significant, and to have Asian Americans and Asians representing the United States in these games is more than symbolic.” Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country have endured racist verbal, physical and sometimes deadly attacks for two years now, fueled by the pandemic. Also read: Doping hearing to decide Russian skater’s Olympic fate Some perpetrators have based their hate on the fact that the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China. Adding to the mix: former President Donald Trump, who regularly talked about COVID-19 in racial terms. Gu, the daredevil freestyle skier who placed first in the big air competition, said she’d never been as scared as when a man directed a tirade about the coronavirus’ Chinese origins against her and her immigrant grandmother at a San Francisco pharmacy. The San Francisco native, fashion model and social media figure has also been criticized with anti-China rhetoric for switching from the U.S. team to the China team. Conservative Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Will Cain even dedicated a segment to berating Gu, saying she was “ungrateful” and is “betraying her country.” Those racially charged denunciations have been called out on social media for being hypocritical. Phil Yu, who runs the popular Angry Asian Man blog, tweeted succinctly: “Oh sure, it’s always ‘go back to your country’ but not ‘go back to your country and win a gold medal.’” The dichotomy of the Asian American woman’s existence is not limited to Winter Olympians, though. In October, Hmong American gymnast Sunisa Lee said she was pepper sprayed by someone shouting racist slurs while driving by in a car. At the time, she was standing outside with a group of Asian American friends in Los Angeles while filming the “Dancing with the Stars” TV show. Lesser-profile Olympians from the Tokyo Games like golfer Danielle Kang and karateka Sukura Kokumai spoke about their experiences with anti-Asian hate last summer. Kang said she’s fought racism all her life and urged for a broader social studies curriculum that could better capture today’s multicultural America. “I’ve been told to go back to China. I don’t know why they think China is the only Asian country,” said the Korean American athlete. “I also have heard, ‘Do you eat dogs for dinner?’ It’s nothing new to me. However, the violence was very upsetting. But the violence also has been around. I’ve gotten into fist fights. I’ve grown up like this.” Kokumai, who is Japanese American, was angry to discover that the same man who had harassed her in April with racist slurs also assaulted an elderly Asian American couple. Equally painful: colleagues’ silence when the incident was reported. She said Japan’s coach called her about it before members of her U.S. team did. “It was really hurtful that it took so long for my side of the federation to address it,” Kokumai said last summer. In July, when Lee became the surprise breakout star of the Tokyo Olympics by winning gold in the all-around event and bronze on uneven bars, Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said she felt conflicted about seeing Lee on a pedestal given the way Hmongs have been marginalized. “I’m really wrestling with this idea that we’re all ‘American’ only when it comes to us being excellent and winning medals for the country,” Choimorrow said. “Asian American women are hyper-visible in ways that dehumanize us and completely invisible in the ways that humanize us.”

Across two pandemic Olympics set in Asian countries, Asian American woman fronting the Games have encountered a whiplashing duality — prized on the global stage for their medal-winning talent, buffeted by the escalating crisis of racist abuse at home. The world’s most elite and international sporting event, which pits athletes and countries against each other, underscores along the way the crude reality that many Asian women face: of only being seen when they have something to offer. “It’s like Asian American women can’t win,” says Jeff Yang, an author and cultural critic. “Asian American female athletes, like most Asian American women in many other spaces, are seen as worthy when they can deliver … and then disposed of otherwise.” The issue is playing out at the Beijing Winter Games, the third straight Olympics set in Asia and the second held during the unrelenting global coronavirus crisis — and playing out, too, during a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Here, U.S. snowboarder Chloe Kim and China’s freestyle skier Eileen Gu are the latest additions to the list of American women of Asian descent who have been “It Girls” of the Winter Games, joining icons like American figure skaters Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan. When Kim and Gu earned their gold medals in Beijing, it was the perfect bow on professional narratives that have been covered incessantly leading up to the actual event. Their star power and talent made them two of the de facto spokeswomen for the Olympics. Meanwhile, other Asian American women like figure skaters Karen Chen and Alysa Liu of the U.S. team and Zhu Yi of the China team have also been promoted by their national teams and scrutinized — sometimes harshly — by Olympic fans. Commentators have mocked Yi for falling in the team event, as if she deserved the mistake after giving up her U.S. citizenship to compete for her ancestral homeland. Others are angry that she “stole” the Olympic spot from an actual China-born athlete. Even the winners struggle to feel fully embraced in America. Kim, who won the halfpipe at the Beijing and Pyeongchang Olympics, has revealed she was tormented online daily. She says she was consumed by fear that her parents could be killed whenever she heard news about another brutal assault on an Asian person. There have been more than 10,000 reported anti-Asian incidents — from taunts to outright assaults – between March 2020 and September 2021, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that gathers data on racially motivated attacks related to the pandemic.  “The experience of hate is withering, and it takes a huge mental health toll,” says Cynthia Choi, the coalition’s co-founder. “When we think about the Olympics, it’s really incredibly powerful to have taken place in Asia three times in a row. That context is very significant, and to have Asian Americans and Asians representing the United States in these games is more than symbolic.” Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country have endured racist verbal, physical and sometimes deadly attacks for two years now, fueled by the pandemic. Some perpetrators have based their hate on the fact that the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China. Adding to the mix: former President Donald Trump, who regularly talked about COVID-19 in racial terms. Gu, the daredevil freestyle skier who placed first in the big air competition, said she’d never been as scared as when a man directed a tirade about the coronavirus’ Chinese origins against her and her immigrant grandmother at a San Francisco pharmacy. The San Francisco native, fashion model and social media figure has also been criticized with anti-China rhetoric for switching from the U.S. team to the China team. Conservative Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Will Cain even dedicated a segment to berating Gu, saying she was “ungrateful” and is “betraying her country.” Those racially charged denunciations have been called out on social media for being hypocritical. Phil Yu, who runs the popular Angry Asian Man blog, tweeted succinctly: “Oh sure, it’s always ‘go back to your country’ but not ‘go back to your country and win a gold medal.’” The dichotomy of the Asian American woman’s existence is not limited to Winter Olympians, though. In October, Hmong American gymnast Sunisa Lee said she was pepper sprayed by someone shouting racist slurs while driving by in a car. At the time, she was standing outside with a group of Asian American friends in Los Angeles while filming the “Dancing with the Stars” TV show. Lesser-profile Olympians from the Tokyo Games like golfer Danielle Kang and karateka Sukura Kokumai spoke about their experiences with anti-Asian hate last summer. Kang said she’s fought racism all her life and urged for a broader social studies curriculum that could better capture today’s multicultural America. “I’ve been told to go back to China. I don’t know why they think China is the only Asian country,” said the Korean American athlete. “I also have heard, ‘Do you eat dogs for dinner?’ It’s nothing new to me. However, the violence was very upsetting. But the violence also has been around. I’ve gotten into fist fights. I’ve grown up like this.” Kokumai, who is Japanese American, was angry to discover that the same man who had harassed her in April with racist slurs also assaulted an elderly Asian American couple. Equally painful: colleagues’ silence when the incident was reported. She said Japan’s coach called her about it before members of her U.S. team did. Also read: US-born freeskier Gu wins Olympic big air gold for China “It was really hurtful that it took so long for my side of the federation to address it,” Kokumai said last summer. In July, when Lee became the surprise breakout star of the Tokyo Olympics by winning gold in the all-around event and bronze on uneven bars, Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said she felt conflicted about seeing Lee on a pedestal given the way Hmongs have been marginalized. “I’m really wrestling with this idea that we’re all ‘American’ only when it comes to us being excellent and winning medals for the country,” Choimorrow said. “Asian American women are hyper-visible in ways that dehumanize us and completely invisible in the ways that humanize us.”

Sofia Goggia is back on snow and preparing to fly to China to defend her Olympic downhill title two weeks after crashing and injuring her left knee and leg. Goggia posted a video on Facebook showing herself wearing Italy’s Olympic team jacket and says, “today I got back on skis and it was great.” She adds, “So much work over these two weeks, so many injuries to cure, so much effort … but so much desire to make it.” Also read: Emboldened China opens Olympics, with lockdown and boycotts Goggia sprained her left knee, partially tore a cruciate ligament and has a “minor fracture” of the fibula bone in her leg. She also had some tendon damage after the crash in a World Cup super-G in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Goggia has won the last eight World Cup downhills that she completed. The Italian says that she’s “always been able to focus on the goal and I never considered it lost.” She adds that she’ll fly to China “soon” and that once there she’ll “put everything together turn after turn like always.” Also read: More world leaders wish Beijing Winter Olympics, Paralympics complete success Goggia could race the super-G next Friday. The women’s downhill is scheduled for Feb. 15.

Athletes will need to be vaccinated — or face a long quarantine — take tests daily and wear masks when not competing or training. Clapping is OK to cheer on teammates, not chanting. Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 will be sent into isolation and unable to compete until cleared for discharge. Welcome to the Beijing Olympics, where strict containment measures will aim to create a virus-proof “bubble” for thousands of international visitors at a time when omicron is fueling infections globally. The prevention protocols will be similar to those at the Tokyo Games this summer, but much tighter. That won't be a stretch in Beijing, with China having maintained a “Zero COVID" policy since early in the pandemic. Still, China's ability to stick to its zero-tolerance approach nationally is already being tested by the highly transmissible omicron variant, which is more contagious than earlier variants of the virus and better able to evade protection from vaccines. With just weeks to go before the Feb. 4 start of the Games, more than 20 million people in six cities are under lockdown after recent outbreaks. Here’s how the Games will work. Also read: China says US diplomatic boycott violates Olympic spirit DO ATHLETES HAVE TO BE VACCINATED? Yes, athletes and other participants including team staff and news media need to be fully vaccinated to be allowed in the designated Olympic areas without completing a 21-day quarantine. Those areas will consist of the Olympic Village, game venues, other select spots and dedicated transport. That’s different from the Tokyo Games, where participants didn’t have to be vaccinated. Participants are considered fully vaccinated according to the definitions outlined by their countries. Before boarding their flights, everyone also needs to provide two recent negative tests from approved labs. The threat of being sidelined by a positive test is adding to the pressure for athletes. Mogul skier Hannah Soar said she's avoiding contact with people indoors and behaving as if everyone has the virus: “We’re basically at the point of acting like it’s March 2020.” WHAT ABOUT DAILY LIFE? Upon arrival at the airport in Beijing, participants will have their temperatures taken and be tested with throat and nasal swabs. An Olympics official who recently arrived on site said at a press briefing the process took him 45 minutes, though organizers note times might vary. A bus will then take people to their designated lodging, where they’ll wait up to six hours for test results to clear them to move about in approved areas. Restrictions on movement within that “closed loop” are intended to seal off any potential contact between Olympic participants and the local population. Throat swabs for testing will be required daily for all participants. In Tokyo, participants spit into vials for antigen tests. Standard prevention measures are being encouraged, such as ventilating rooms and keeping a distance of about 3 feet (1 meter) from others – or 6 feet (2 meters) from athletes. Masks that are N95 or of a similar caliber will also be required in indoor and outdoor areas with few exceptions, such as when people are eating or drinking. Dining halls will have partitions and seating capacity will be reduced to help maintain distancing. In spaces where distancing isn’t possible, such as elevators, talking isn’t allowed. Staff will be stationed in key areas to help guide people and ensure protocols are being followed. Also read: China’s Tianjin on partial lockdown after omicron found WHAT HAPPENS IF AN ATHLETE TESTS POSITIVE? In Tokyo, organizers say 33 athletes tested positive during the Games. Of those, 22 were withdrawn from from competition. Even with the tightened precautions in Beijing, experts say some positive tests are likely, especially with omicron in play. If an athlete or other participant tests positive but doesn’t have symptoms, they’ll need to go into isolation in a dedicated hotel. They’ll be provided with meals and can open their windows for fresh air but won’t be able to leave their rooms, which organizers say will be about 270 square feet (25 square meters). Athletes can request fitness equipment for training. People with no symptoms can leave isolation after two days of negative tests. Organizers say those testing positive will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, but it might still be too late for athletes to compete. As a general rule, organizers say the panel will review those who keep testing positive for more than 14 days. Those who test positive and have symptoms have to go into isolation in a hospital. They’ll also need to two days of negative tests to be let loose, as well as three days of normal temperatures and symptoms subsiding. Organizers have said athletes who recover after testing positive ahead of the Games will also be assessed on a case-by-case basis in a “more flexible manner." WILL THERE BE FANS? Spectators from overseas won’t be allowed. As for local fans, Beijing organizers say they're finalizing rules for their attendance. It's not clear how the recent outbreaks around China will factor into the decisions. But organizers of the Tokyo Games had also planned to allow some domestic fans, before scrapping the idea because a surge in local cases. The result was surreal scenes of athletes competing in empty stadiums. Even if some fans are allowed in Beijing, their presence will be muted. Everyone is being asked to clap instead of shouting or singing, as had been the plan in Tokyo. CAN IT WORK? Despite the omicron-fueled surge hitting many parts of the world including China, organizers may still be able to pull off the Olympics without as much disruption as some fear. Olympic athletes are highly motivated to avoid infection so they can compete, noted Dr. Sandro Galea, a public health expert at Boston University. And even if it's harder with omicron, he noted it’s no mystery what people need to do to avoid infection — take prevention measures, such as limiting exposure to others.

The medals were billed as the most sustainable ever produced. To match the festive spirit of South America’s first Olympics, officials from Brazil, the host country for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, boasted that the medals hung around the necks of athletes on the winners' podium were also a victory for the environment: The gold was produced free of mercury and the silver recycled from thrown away X-ray plates and mirrors. Five years on, the refiner that provided the gold for the medals, Marsam, is processing gold ultimately purchased by hundreds of well-known publicly traded U.S. companies — among them Microsoft, Tesla and Amazon — that are legally required to responsibly source metals in an industry long plagued by environmental and labor concerns. But a comprehensive review of public records by The Associated Press found that the Sao Paulo-based company processes gold for, and shared ownership links to, an intermediary accused by Brazilian prosecutors of buying gold mined illegally on Indigenous lands and other areas deep in the Amazon rainforest. The AP previously reported in this series that the scale of prospecting for gold on Indigenous lands has exploded in recent years and involves carving illegal landing strips in the forest for unauthorized airplanes to ferry in heavy equipment, fuel and backhoes to tear at the earth in search of the precious metal. Weak government oversight enabled by President Jair Bolsonaro, the son of a prospector himself, has only exacerbated the problem of illegal gold mining in protected areas. Critics also fault an international certification program used by manufacturers to show they aren’t using minerals that come from conflict zones, saying it is an exercise in greenwashing. “There is no real traceability as long as the industry relies on self-regulation,” said Mark Pieth, a professor of criminal law at the University of Basel in Switzerland and author of the 2018 book “Gold Laundering.” “People know where the gold comes from, but they don’t bother to go very far back into the supply chain because they know they will come into contact with all kinds of criminal activity.” ___ Much like brown and black tributaries that feed the Amazon River, gold illegally mined in the rainforest mixes into the supply chain and melds with clean gold to become almost indistinguishable. Nuggets are spirited out of the jungle in prospectors’ dusty pockets to the nearest city where they are sold to financial brokers. All that’s required to transform the raw ore into a tradable asset regulated by the central bank is a handwritten document attesting to the specific point in the rainforest where the gold was extracted. The fewer questions asked, the better. At many of those brokers’ Amazon outposts — the financial system’s front door — the gold becomes the property of Dirceu Frederico Sobrinho. Read:Leftist millennial wins election as Chile’s next president For four decades, Dirceu has embodied the up-by-your-bootstraps myth of the Brazilian garimpeiro, or prospector. The son of a vegetable grocer who sold his produce near an infamous open-pit mine so packed with prospectors — among them Bolsonaro’s father — they looked like swarming ants, he caught the gold bug in the mid-1980s and began dispatching planeloads of raw ore from a remote Amazon town. He secured his first concession in 1990, one year after the nation rolled out a permitting regime to regulate prospecting. Today, from a high rise on Sao Paulo’s busiest avenue, he is a major player in Brazil’s gold rush, with 173 prospecting areas either registered to his name or with pending requests, according to Brazil's mining regulator's registry. In the same building is the headquarters of the nation’s gold association, Anoro, which he leads. Dirceu, until last year, was also a partner in Marsam. But even with gold jewelry dangling from his fingers and wrist, Dirceu still proudly boasts his everyman garimpeiro roots. “You don’t motivate someone to go into the forest if they’re not chasing after a dream,” he said in a rare interview from his corner office studded with a giant jade eagle. “Whoever deals in gold has that: They dream, they believe, they like it.” “We have a saying among the garimpeiros: ‘I’m a pawn, but I’m a pawn for gold,'” he adds. At the center of Dirceu’s empire is F.D’Gold, Brazil’s largest buyer of gold from prospecting sites, with purchases last year totaling more than 2 billion reais ($361 million) from 252 wildcat sites, according to data from the mining regulator. Only two international firms that run industrial-sized gold mines paid more in royalties in 2021, a sign of how once artisanal prospecting has become big business in Brazil — at least for some. In August, federal prosecutors filed a civil suit against F.D’Gold and two other brokers seeking the immediate suspension of all activities and payment of 10 billion reais ($1.8 billion) in social and environmental damages. The complaint alleges the companies failed to take actions that would have prevented the illegal extraction of a combined 4.3 metric tons from protected areas and Indigenous territories, where mining is not allowed. Dirceu said his company complies with all laws and has implemented extra controls, but he acknowledged that determining the exact origin of the gold it obtains is “impossible” at present. He has proposed an industry-wide digital registry to improve transparency.  The ongoing suit is the result of a study published inuly by the Federal University of Minas Gerais which found that as much as 28% of Brazil’s gold produced in 2019 and 2020 was potentially mined illegally. To reach that conclusion, researchers combed through 17,400 government-registered transactions by F.D’Gold and other buyers to pinpoint the location where the gold was purportedly mined. In many cases, the given location wasn’t an authorized site or, when cross-checked with satellite images, showed none of the hallmark signs of mining activity — deforestation, stagnant ponds of waste — meaning the gold originated elsewhere. Dirceu’s name and those of F.D’Gold and his mining company Ouro Roxo have popped up repeatedly over the years in numerous criminal investigations. He has been charged but never convicted. A decade ago, federal prosecutors in Amazon’s Amapa state accused his company of knowingly purchasing illegal gold from a national park that was later transformed into gold bars. The charges were dismissed in 2017 after a federal judge in Brasilia ruled that F.D’Gold made the purchases legally, as evidenced by the invoices. Separate money laundering charges against Dirceu were also dismissed, due to lack of evidence. Dirceu has denied wrongdoing. ___ Whatever its origin, all the raw ore purchased by F.D’Gold ends up at Marsam. F.D’Gold accounts for more than one-third of the gold Marsam processes, according to André Nunes, an external consultant for Marsam. After almost two years as a partner in the Sao Paulo-based refiner, Dirceu stepped down last year and his daughter, Sarah Almeida Westphal, assumed management responsibilities. It was part of an effort to put different family members in charge of their own businesses, which function as separate legal entities, said Nunes, who previously worked for F.D’Gold. “As much as it’s the same family, it’s important that each monkey has its own branch,” he said. But the federal tax authority's corporate registry shows Dirceu and Westphal remain partners in a machine rental and air cargo venture based in the Amazonian city of Itaituba, the national epicenter of prospecting. And Westphal could be seen working on a computer at F.D’Gold’s office on the day the AP interviewed Dirceu. From Marsam, the gold travels far and wide. More than 300 publicly traded companies list Marsam as a refiner in responsible mining disclosures they are required to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The refiner has been virtually the only supplier to Brazil’s mint over the past decade, according to data provided to the AP through a freedom of information request. “Why do they want our bars? Because they’re accepted all over the world,” said Nunes, who is also a member of Marsam's six-person compliance committee. Enabling such robust sales around the world is a seal of approval from the Responsible Minerals Initiative, or RMI. The certification program, run by a Virginia-based coalition of manufacturers, emerged with the passage a decade ago of legislation in the U.S. requiring companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals fueling civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Later, its standards were supplemented by tougher guidelines developed by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD Marsam is one of just two refiners in Brazil certified as compliant with RMI’s standards for responsible sourcing of gold, having successfully completed two independent audits. The last one was performed in 2018 by UL Responsible Sourcing, an Illinois-based consultancy. But its ties to Dirceu's family and its strategic positioning at the pinch point between the Amazon rainforest and global commerce raises questions about its previously unexamined role in the processing and sale of gold allegedly sourced from off-limit areas. Marsam hasn’t been accused by prosecutors of any wrongdoing and insists that it only refines gold, not sell it, on behalf of third-party exporters and domestic vendors. The company in 2016 introduced a supply chain policy, which it has updated over the years, requiring it to seek out information from suppliers whenever they are publicly linked to illicit activities. They are also expected to analyze a mandatory declaration of origin form submitted by each client. No such risks were identified in the most recent RMI report and Marsam was moved to a lower risk category requiring an audit once every three years. Critics say one problem is that the OECD’s guidelines RMI measures companies against pay scant attention to environmental crimes or the rights of Indigenous communities. Instead, they are geared toward risks stemming from civil wars and criminal networks. In Latin America, only Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela — where drug cartels or guerrilla insurgencies are active — are classified as conflict-affected and high-risk areas deserving greater scrutiny for sourcing practices. But the influx of illegal miners into Indigenous territories has been on the rise in recent years in Brazil — sometimes ending in bloodshed. In May, hundreds of prospectors raided a Munduruku village, setting houses on fire, including one that belonged to a prominent anti-mining activist. The attack followed clashes farther north in Roraima state, where miners in motorboats and carrying automatic weapons repeatedly threatened a riverside Yanomami settlement. In one incident, two children, ages one and five, drowned when a shooting sent people scattering into the woods. In their suits against F.D’Gold and the two other brokers, prosecutors blame expanding mining activity for the illegal clearing in 2019 and 2020 of some 5,000 hectares of once pristine rainforest located on Indigenous territories as well as exacerbating “internal rifts that may be irreconcilable.” Read:Brazil reopens amid looming threat from delta variant Experts say these kinds of activities barely register in corporate boardrooms where sourcing decisions are made and given the seal of approval by international certification programs. “Certification connotes a degree of certitude that isn’t at all possible in the gold industry, especially in Brazil,” said David Soud, an analyst at I.R. Consilium, which recently prepared a report for the OECD on illegal gold flows from neighboring Venezuela. “The result is a lot of blind spots that can easily be exploited by bad actors.” ___ Some of those blind spots are created by Brazil’s own weak oversight. Under Brazilian law, securities brokers like F.D’Gold can’t be held responsible if the prospector whose ore they buy lies about its provenance. Nor is there any effective way to track the information provided at the point of sale. It’s a system that inhibits tracking and accountability at best, and at worst enables willful ignorance as a means to launder illegal gold, according to wildcat mining experts including Larissa Rodrigues of the environmental think tank Choices Institute. For starters, experts say there need to be electronic invoices feeding a database that allows information to be verified. “The supply chain is absorbing gold that doesn’t come from that chain. We know this happens,” said Rodrigues. “It’s a fact that fraud exists, but you can’t prosecute because you can’t prove it.” Dirceu didn’t deny the possibility that F.D’Gold has unwittingly bought dirty gold. But he insists F.D’Gold, as an entity regulated by Brazil’s powerful central bank, follows the law and goes beyond what is required — such as hiring in 2020 two companies to monitor through satellite imagery the sources of its gold. “The moment we had knowledge this could be happening, we hired them,” he said. As president of the nation’s gold association, he claims to have been pushing since at least 2017 a plan to create a digital profile of every participant in the supply chain, complete with the garimpeiro’s photo, fingerprints and ID number. “Digitalization and automation is the start of traceability,” he said. “The more legality, the more security there will be for our activities.” Yet for all the apparent industry goodwill, and the support of Brazil’s tax authority, the proposal remains just that — an idea that hasn’t even been taken up by Congress. In the past two decades, the central bank hasn’t revoked authorization for any company that purchases gold. For its part, Marsam says it uses its “best efforts” to identify the origin of the metals it refines. That includes requiring clients to sign affidavits attesting to the metal’s legality, demanding original invoices and conducting client visits to verify they have systems in place to prevent fraud. But it doesn’t visit the mines themselves — something that RMI requires of refiners operating only in high-risk jurisdictions. “We have to be diligent, but not do work that isn’t ours,” Nunes said. Asked when was the last time Marsam suspended a client it suspects of trading in dirty gold he shook his head, struggling to recall. “I don’t remember it ever happening,” Nunes said before finally harkening back to one instance more than a decade ago. ___ RMI wouldn’t discuss prosecutors' allegations against F.D’Gold, despite its close affiliation with Marsam, citing confidentiality agreements to encourage refiners to participate in its grievance process. In a statement, it said that it takes all allegations “very seriously” and works with companies to address concerns. As part of that process, refiners are expected to trace activities all the way back to the mine whenever red flags are detected. If they don’t then address the concerns, they will be removed from the conformant list. A 2018 report by the OECD found that while RMI's standards are aligned with its guidelines there are significant gaps in the way RMI and other industry initiatives carry out audits, relying more on a refiner’s policies and procedures than its due diligence efforts. RMI-approved auditors also demonstrated a lack of basic technical skills and familiarity with the OECD guidelines, the study found. “There was also an observed absence of curiosity, professional skepticism and critical analysis,” according to the report. RMI said it has since strengthened implementation efforts and is awaiting the outcome of a new assessment being conducted for the European Union. Additional analysis in 2017 by Kumi, a London-based consulting firm that advises the OECD, found that only 5% of 314 end-user companies then registered with RMI, most of them U.S. based, had policies on sourcing conflict materials that were in line with the OECD guidelines. “End-user companies set the tone for what happens in their supply chains,” said Andrew Britton, managing director of Kumi, which is conducting a new assessment of certifiers now for the European Commission. “It’s really important that companies’ due diligence on their supply chains really probes into potential risks and is not simply a box-ticking exercise.” ___ While land grabbing by ranchers, loggers and prospectors is hardly new in the Amazon, never before has Brazil had a president as outspokenly favorable to such interests. Bolsonaro campaigned for the nation’s top job with promises of unearthing the Amazon’s vast mineral wealth, and his support for prospectors has encouraged a modern-day gold rush. Bolsonaro’s father prospected for gold at Serra Pelada, where Dirceu first saw gold mining, and the president sometimes draws on his upbringing to rally support from prospectors. While campaigning, he aired videos in the Amazon region in which he boasted of sometimes pulling over at jungle stream and pulling a pan from a car to try his luck. “Interest in the Amazon isn’t about the Indians or the damn trees; it’s the ore,” he told a group of prospectors at the presidential palace in 2019, vowing to deploy the armed forces to allow their operations to continue unfettered. Then in May 2021, he attacked environmentalists for trying to criminalize prospecting. “It’s really cool how people in suits and ties guess about everything that happens in the countryside,” he said sarcastically. Beyond the rhetoric, Bolsonaro’s administration recently introduced legislation that would open up Indigenous territories to mining — something federal prosecutors have called unconstitutional and activists warn would wreak vast social and environmental damages. Dirceu said he opposes allowing mining of Indigenous lands unless local people support the activity and are given first priority to pursue it themselves. But even as he fashions himself a reformer from the inside, he’s also benefitted from the current free-for-all. For one, he doesn’t even consider prospectors working without a permit to be illegal — just irregular. Given persistent efforts to deregulate gold extraction, calls by Dirceu and the gold association to increase accountability over the gold supply chain “ring hollow,” said Robert Muggah, who oversees an initiative on environmental crime in the Amazon at think tank Igarape Institute. Soon, Dirceu may stand to profit even more. Recently, F.D’Gold received approval to begin exporting directly. Dirceu said the company is currently seeking clients abroad and hopes to begin shipments soon. If he succeeds, it means that, for the first time, someone will have a hand in the entirety of Brazil’s gold supply chain: from the Amazon where the gold is mined, to the outposts where it is first sold, to the planes that bring the ore to his daughter’s refinery in Sao Paulo and, finally, into the hands of foreign buyers. "It’s really important to understand that the nature of gold extraction in countries like Brazil is linked, ineluctably, to the global markets,” said Muggah.

Is cricket making a return at the 2028 Olympics? The IOC has a negative view of cricket. Cricket hasn't been in the Olympics in a long time since it takes five days to play. The ICC is optimistic that cricket will be featured in the Olympics again, thanks to the popularity of T20 cricket and the fact that it takes less time to play this format. It is not certain that the T20 format will be considered if cricket is included in the Olympics again. The ICC is pushing to return cricket to the Olympics and some actions have already been taken. Read: Big step towards becoming a big team: Shakib The ICC's Initiatives to bring cricket back to the Olympics The International Cricket Council (ICC) has already started the process of bringing cricket back to the Olympics.A working committee has already been formed for this purpose. The committee will take steps to include cricket in the Olympics. The ICC's initial objective is to get cricket included in the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. England and Wales Cricket Board Chairman Ian Watmore will lead the ICC Olympic Working Group. Indra Nooyi (ICC’s Independent Director), Tavengwa Mukuhlani (ICC Associate Member Director), Mahinda Vallipuram (Vice President of the ACC), and Parag Marathe (Chairman of USA Cricket) will accompany him. Read:BAN vs. NZ 2021: New Zealand Announce Squad For the T20 Series against Bangladesh As per the ICC, the inclusion of cricket in the 2028 Olympics itinerary will be a big achievement. Moreover, cricket is followed by over a billion people worldwide, including over 30 million cricket enthusiasts in the United States. Therefore, cricket should be included in the Olympic Games if the commercial aspect of the game is considered.  Cricket will be included at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022. The International Cricket Council officials believe this will be an ideal platform to exhibit what this sport can contribute to the Olympics. Read: Shakib Al Hasan Favourite to Win ICC’s Player of the Month for July Cricket was last played at the Summer Olympics in Paris in 1900, with just Great Britain and the hosts France competing. The only cricket match at the Olympics was held between Great Britain and France. It was a low-scoring contest and in the end, Great Britain won the match by 156 runs.

The air is filled with excitement as the Tokyo Olympics kicks off this season. The postponed date of the event has only increased the anticipation and so far, the event has entertained and inspired many of us. Each sport has shown off the best the world has to offer and that could be a sign to get started to join in on the excitement. While certain activities may seem rather a niche, there are a plethora of activities in the Olympics that could light a fire in you to get fit and hone your skills on any of the crafts. Here are some of the most popular Olympic game exercises you or anyone else can do.   Best Olympic game exercises Tennis One of the classics and a sport that definitely warrants a try. Tennis and other racket sports have a fine balance of needing to understand the fundamental technique, not needing many players, and are extremely cost-effective. To become good at Tennis requires nothing short of a court, a racket with tennis balls, and a dedicated training partner. Tennis requires basic fitness, but that can easily be trained with enough commitment. Tennis has one of the most thriving scenes in global competitions outside of the Olympics and is worth getting involved in just for its healthy community alone.  Read:Pandemic Yoga: How to strengthen lungs, ease breathing problems with yoga Archery While archery may not be the cheapest hobby, the amount of skill you can cultivate with the bow and arrow can seem almost limitless if you’re willing to put in the hours. While endurance gets to take a backseat for this sport, stamina is still relatively important here. Bows have poundage and pulling the string back while lining up the shot requires a steady hand, concentrated breathing, and muscle endurance on your back. While professionals make it look easy, the skill floor for this activity to look at. If you have a knack for picking up mechanically complex hobbies that require your full attention, archery could be the sport for you.  Basketball Basketball has one of the biggest following out of all sports and is a hobby that won’t be running out of players anytime soon. All that’s needed is a court with a few friends and you’re ready to start a game! While basketball is often outshined by other sports in the Olympics, the off-season is where you’ll see your investment in the sport pay off. The beauty of the game is that you could play it alone if you want to. Practicing layups, three-pointers, and other drills are great for honing your skills.  Read Best Team Sports for Weight Loss Judo There are multiple martial arts represented in the Olympics, but Judo is our recommended pick. Judo is a sport that is good for those who aren’t about aggression but are still interested in defending themselves. The art revolves around using the opponent's weight against them which makes for a very reactive style of martial arts. Strikes are not as prevalent, however, stamina and endurance are crucial when it comes to improving. Being gi-based, grading is a thing and progress is more quantifiable which can be good for newer fighters to gauge their progress.  Beach Volleyball Beach volleyball has always carried a casual tone and seeing it represented in the Olympics shouldn’t get in the way of that. While the technique is important for the sport, volleyball incentives polished coordination over heroic dives and glorious spikes. The beach is a wonderful place to start as the sand is the perfect starting ground to be more adventurous with your movement and your leaps in the midst of heated exchanges. Volleyball has distinctive roles teams can follow to understand their positions better, and it will be helpful for participants to see what fits them the best. Read:Best Martial Arts For Fitness Roller Skating Otherwise known as Roller Speed Skating in the Olympics, roller skating can be picked up without necessarily making things a competition. An unorthodox sport that can double as a mode of transportation for the daring, roller skating could be the adventurous alternative for those who have had their minds set on biking instead. Rollerblading also fits into this category and both require balance, decent hand-eye coordination, and a decent understanding of acceleration and braking. If you’re keen to give this a shot, be sure to wear protection at all times. Fencing Like Judo, fencing is a sport that teaches more than fitness techniques. Fencing requires precise movements that determine how easy it is for your opponent to score against you. It is best to take fencing up as a class as the sport is more layered than most give it credit for. The outfit may get a little stuffy, but the intensity of the craft and the robust global community will make this experience an insightful one.  Read How to choose the best shoes for running Kayaking Kayaking is a sport that can range from being a zen way to spend your time to a mad race between you and your friend. Kayaking is an upper-body buster that will take your shoulders, arms, and chest for a workout unlike any other. Kayaking can easily be rented and practice will certainly make you a master of rivers in no time. However, if your location doesn’t permit kayaking, this hobby could be a little harder to pick up than some of the others on the list.  Honorable Mentions Ultimately, the Olympics is a platform for the best athletes to gather and test their mettle against each other in a series of grueling competitions. While swimming, cycling, and running are classic fitness routines that are done daily; the setting of the Olympics adds win conditions that prioritize speed as the metric for participants to follow. These three sports are commonly done on a casual level; where fitness and results commonly supersede timing records. We certainly recommend all three for a good workout, but not as much if you’re hoping to emulate an olympian you saw on television.  Read:Tips to Get Marathon Level Endurance and Stamina

Sunisa Lee’s gymnastics are stunning. They’re just not “perfect.” Not technically, anyway. Thousands of hours of practice. Dozens upon dozens of competitions. And not once has a judge watched the new Olympic all-around champion do her thing — not even on uneven bars, where the 45-second set she plans doing in Sunday’s event finals is a free-flowing series of connections and releases that make it seem as if she is floating — and thought “that’s flawless.” Lee is not alone. No elite gymnast — not even American star and six-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles — has received a perfect score since the sport moved off the “10” system to a new Code of Points in 2006. Scores are now a combination of the difficulty of the routine (which is open-ended) and the execution, which is based on a 10.0 scale. In theory, “perfect” execution is possible. It’s just that no one has ever done it. A reality that long ago led Lee to make peace with the idea that a faultless routine is a myth, no matter how it may feel to her or how it may look to everyone other than the two people in blue blazers sitting at the judge’s tables. Instead, she shoots for what she considers her best, perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation more than anything. Her 15.400 on bars during the team final was the highest of the night by any athlete on any event and a spectacular display that helped the U.S. claim silver. It also included 1.4 points of deductions, and she could sense them piling up even as her teammates roared encouragement. Hard to blame her for sounding relieved on Friday when talking about her impending switch to competing collegiately at Auburn. “(I want to) kind of get away from this elite atmosphere just because it’s so, like, crazy,” Lee said. It’s a mental and physical grind. Gymnastics can wreak havoc on the body and cast doubt in the mind. Every single turn in every single rotation in every single practice every single day of your career can be tweaked. “It’s hard in that sense because it is such a sport where you’re trying to reach perfection, but perfection is unattainable,” said three-time Olympian Ellie Black of Canada. “I still struggle sometimes. It’s not like you ever get something and it’s easy for the rest of your life and the rest of your career.” Read: Olympics Latest: 6 banished for breaking COVID rules For Lee, a release of sort awaits. NCAA training is limited to 20 hours a week. The difficulty and length of routines are a step down from what Lee is used to and the 10-point scoring system remains very much alive. A shot at drilling a routine and being rewarded for it awaits, even if Lee called it “weird to think about it.” Such is the delicate psychological dance between the world’s best gymnasts and their sport. Lee has been competing under the international code for so long, she can’t even fathom the idea of seeing a score flash that doesn’t include being nitpicked to within an inch of its life. It takes copious amounts of mental strength to thrive when nothing — from a technical standpoint anyway — is up to the ultimate standard, which puts it at odds with most other sports. Tom Brady can throw a 50-yard spiral for a touchdown. Steph Curry can swish a 3-pointer. Those moments don’t exist in gymnastics. Black believes the code of points makes up for it in other ways. The open-ended nature of the system allows for more creativity in putting together routines. “That’s the part of it that’s kind of addicting,” said Black, who qualified for the Olympic all-around final before an ankle injury forced her to sit out. “There’s something new to try.” Besides, Black figures, “if you could just hit something perfectly, you’d probably lose some of that interest or motivation to keep going.” So Black — just like every other gymnast on the planet — searches for tiny moments of bliss. The stuck dismount. The mastery of a new skill. The smooth connection from one element to another. Still, the inner voice — the one that can feel the wobble or sense the imperfect hand placement — can be tough to turn off. American Chellsie Memmel won a world all-around title in 2005 and was part of the silver-medal winning U.S. team in Beijing in 2008. Memmel retired and went into coaching and judging before beginning returning to training during the pandemic. Even as her skills returned, turning the “judge” switch off was difficult. She records every routine then does a video review with her father Andy, who also serves as her coach. She loves the immediate feedback on what’s going right and what’s going wrong while trying to make a point to not be too hard on herself. Read: ‘OK not to be OK’: Mental health takes top role at Olympics “You have to give yourself some leeway and not beat yourself up about it,” said the 33-year-old Memmel, who competed at the U.S. championships in June. “You have to look at it like: ‘OK, that was fine, but where can I make those improvements? What needs to be fixed?’” Even if the fixing can feel relentless. Biles has come closer than anyone to cracking the code. During the second day of the 2015 U.S. gymnastics championships, the then-18-year-old’s Amanar vault drew an audible “ooooh” throughout the arena when her feet suction-cupped to the mat on her dismount. It looked perfect. It felt perfect. It wasn’t. She received a 9.9-E score. Asked later whether she knows where the deduction might have come from, she shrugged and laughingly suggested her toes were crossed. It’s that same vault — a roundoff/back handspring onto the table followed by 2 1/2 twists — that Biles bailed on during the first rotation of team finals in Tokyo after getting lost in the air. Her availability for the rest of the Games is in question. She already has pulled out of the all-around, uneven bars, vault and floor exercise finals. Maybe she returns for one final bow during the beam final on Tuesday, though time is running out for her bout with “the twisties,” as she described them, to subside. It’s a phenomenon that occasionally plagues gymnasts regardless of skill level, even the greatest of all time. It also highlights the sport’s own Sisyphean pursuit of an ultimate goal that can never be achieved. Maybe that’s not the point anyway. “People need to understand we’re not robots,” said all-around silver medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. A concept Biles, Lee and all the others who gathered in Tokyo have long understood. If they were consumed with perfection, they would have bailed years ago. Go out there. Do you what you can as well as you can for as long as you can. The battle after all, isn’t with the judges. It’s with yourself. “I usually don’t even try and think about the score,” Lee said. “Because that’s when I come out on top.” And what could be more perfect than that?

Any sporting event is, at its heart, a show. It has the actors on center stage, performing for the rest of us. It has the spectators, sitting in their seats watching raptly. And — in modern times, at least — it has the “home” audience, which in the past half century of growing video viewership has far outpaced the numbers of those actually in attendance. At their halfway point, the Tokyo Olympics are still grappling with the fact that in that equation, the middle group — those spectators on the scene who cheer, gin up enthusiasm and add texture to the proceedings — couldn’t come. And in the COVID era, a key question presents itself: If an Olympics falls in the forest and nobody there hears it, did it really make a sound? The Japan organizing committee’s president, Seiko Hashimoto, thinks it will. She said a couple weeks ago that she wasn’t worried that a locked-down, crowdless Olympics — what she calls the “`Tokyo model” — would fundamentally change the experience. “The essence of the Games,” Hashimoto said, “will remain the same.” They won’t, of course. They already aren’t. And in fairness, how could they, when part of that very essence — the roar of a real, live crowd — has been excised out of (you know the phrase by now) an abundance of caution? During the 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic, the relationship between the watched and the watchers in audience-based public events has shifted tectonically. Productions that normally happen in front of crowds — crowds that, it’s worth noting, both watch performances and sometimes become an integral part of them — have changed in various ways. Some entertainment venues turned to presenting performances to people in parked cars, much like drive-in movies; one comedian, Erica Rhodes, filmed a TV special outside the Rose Bowl in California and relied on honking horns for the bulk of her audience response. It added a kinetic, if cacophonous, energy. On TV, the iconic game show “The Price Is Right,” whose fundamental DNA relies on audience members to “come on down!” and become contestants, shut down for six months and then returned with mostly empty seats and contestants who aren’t surprised to be chosen. But when it comes to fan interaction, sports, arguably, have been affected the most of all. Last summer, once big league baseball resumed without fans in the seats, the sport deployed recorded, piped-in crowd noise for the benefit of both athletes and fans watching at home. Most ballparks even created cardboard figures (customizable for a price, of course) to mimic spectator action, a novel if laughable pivot. It was, though, part of a cultural landscape that has been under construction for a long time. Sixty years ago, Daniel J. Boorstin, a historian who became the Librarian of Congress, came up with a term: the “pseudo-event.” Among its traits: It is not spontaneous, but planned. It is created primarily for the purpose of being reproduced. And its success is measured in how widely it is reported, and in how many people watch it. Read: Olympics Latest: 6 banished for breaking COVID rules Pair that with these astonishing figures: The International Olympic Committee generates almost 75% of its income from the sale of broadcast rights. About 40% of the IOC’s total income is from one source — NBC, the U.S. broadcast rights-holder. And estimates suggest canceling the Tokyo Olympics might have cost the IOC $3 billion to $4 billion. Those numbers shout one thing. For all of its focus on the athletes and their accomplishments, this event was made to be watched — and, what’s more, made to be watched by people who aren’t here in Tokyo. “The audience in the venue is no longer the economics. The media is the economics,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. That was an emerging axiom in the late 20th century, and a more ubiquitous one today. But there’s another question to ask, too: Does the lack of on-site crowds impact the quality of at-home viewing? On one hand, the vantage points from your recliner are better than anything you could see in person. The best ticket at an Olympic venue couldn’t begin to approximate what an NBC camera sees. “We’re not only in the best seats; we’re in seats that don’t even exist,” Thompson says. And yet ... There is a very real purpose to crowds, beyond how they impact athletes and performers who are actually there. Research has shown that at-home audiences watching competition — and other forms of entertainment — react to the feeling that they have proxies who are really in the arena. That, in effect, if we can’t be there, we know there are people like us who are. “There’s a reason sitcoms have laugh tracks. Seeing and hearing other people enjoy a thing leads us to enjoy that thing,” says Jennifer Talarico, a professor of psychology at Lafayette College who studies how people remember personally experienced events. Laugh tracks, in use since TV’s early days, were designed to prompt audiences about when to find something funny. But the underlying message is deeper: If we know others are watching and being entertained, it paves the way for our entertainment. That bears out today in the popularity of YouTube videos showing gamers as they game, and in shows like Britain’s “Gogglebox,” in which TV audiences watch ... TV audiences watching TV. There’s the pathos factor, too. The prevailing American Olympic TV narratives — emotion-saturated backstories about individuals, backed by loved ones, working hard and triumphing — are typically intertwined with crowd shots that include those very supporters watching the achievements happen. Read: ‘OK not to be OK’: Mental health takes top role at Olympics “That doesn’t carry through when you can’t pan through to Mom in the crowd,” Talarico says. “Mom isn’t there. She’s still in the same place that she was before. I think that makes the crowd aspect of the Olympics even more influential than a major league baseball game.” There are mitigating factors to Tokyo’s empty seats during these Games. Social media fills in the gaps to some extent; instead of watching a community of watchers, we can now form our own. But it’s not quite the same, is it? There’s a reason that young boys playing driveway basketball stop after a shot and shout, “He shoots, he scores!” before cupping their hands to their mouth to approximate a crowd’s roar. There’s nothing like it. And when TV cameras pan various Olympic venues and find emptiness, or even seats painted in seemingly random drab colors to look as if there are people in them, it’s clear that something — that certain something that only a crowd can provide — is glaringly absent. In the era of screens and of vicarious watching and global live broadcasts, three simple words, “I was there,” still hold power — even if you’re one of the ones who aren’t.